Health care choices made in the domestic sphere are once again front page news: choices about whether or not to vaccinate for measles, how to provide care for the elderly in the home, or what to do when the shortage of health care professionals becomes acute and waiting times for National Health Service's services escalate; all of these issues are at the forefront of current debates on medical provision. In such a climate, it is both heartening and instructive to turn to the decisions made by men and women in the seventeenth century to realize that, in fact, very little has changed.

In recent years, household remedy books have proven to be a gold mine for historians interested in investigating domestic medical practice in the seventeenth century. Anne Stobart's Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England provides an engaging and well-researched addition to the field. In linking household medical practices and lore to the wider context of seventeenth-century medical changes in ideology and professionalization, she is able to lay to rest several faulty assumptions that have proved problematic for patient-centered medical history. Stobart joins historians such as Ian Mortimer, who have argued in recent studies that the seventeenth century was a crucial period for the rise of medical consumerism. As a whole, Stobart's research not only reiterates the importance and varied nature of seventeenth-century domestic medicine but also provides clear evidence to suggest that many of the widely held assumptions about the shape and function of domestic medicine require reappraisal.

One of Stobart's assertions is that it is necessary to investigate self-help at a deeper level to understand domestic medical practice. In a less streamlined study, this could result in an excess of interesting but unexplored data, or an overemphasis on the minutiae of ingredients at the expense of an overarching narrative. Fortunately, Stobart judiciously chooses examples to highlight key points. Thus, letters from the Clarke family are used to demonstrate the variety of individuals involved in household medical care beyond the stereotypical image of the “lady of the manor.” As these letters reveal, caring for an invalid or for young children, conscripted widowed daughters and servants into roles they might not otherwise have filled. Similarly, Stobart uses a wide variety of manuscript and printed recipe books to chronicle not only which ingredients were used in preparations, but also to suggest the physiological focus of recipes, including an interestingly high proportion of recipes focused on the digestive system, as well as an interesting gender divide in which aspects of bodily health the author(s) chose to focus on. Indeed, the issue of gender looms large in Stobart's study, and she successfully demonstrates the need to reassess prevailing assumptions that domestic medicine was “women's work.” This strand of her research calls to mind Lisa Smith's work on male medical involvement in domestic health in the eighteenth century (“The Relative Duties of a Man: Domestic Medicine in England and France, ca. 1670–1740,” Journal of Family History 31, no. 3 [July 2006]: 237–56).

Stobart organizes the book into three sections: information, resources, and practice. While the first two sections contain a wealth of information on how domestic medical knowledge was transmitted, how ingredients were sourced, and what role social status and household income played in constructing the outlines of domestic medicine, it is the final section that proves to be the most novel, making the strongest contribution to the field of research on seventeenth-century household medicine. Stobart successfully demonstrates that domestic medicine was not, in fact, a world removed from the practices of the medical marketplace. Yet there was an undeniable tension between household and marketplace as seventeenth-century medical practitioners were eager to distance themselves from household medicine by denigrating domestic practices passed down over generations. However, as Stobart notes, the landscape was always complex, and for every medical practitioner critical of domestic medical practice, there was another who was quite happy to sell syrup of roses to a mother interested in treating a child at home. Indeed, Stobart's research into families like the Clarkes helps dispel the long-held notion that seventeenth-century medical practitioners thumbed their noses at child patients and that children were largely cared for by women. Mary Clarke in particular stands out as a clear example of a seventeenth-century woman who used the wide variety of medical provision open to her to treat her entire household. Stobart charts Mary's evolution from a young woman unsure of herself to a mother of ten who felt confident enough to disregard the advice in a printed manual when it conflicted with her own medical experience. Stobart provides several examples of women such as Mary Clarke who exercised considerable agency and knowledge in choosing medical treatments and services for themselves and their families. As Stobart persuasively argues, this was not a world in which the domestic environment was divorced from the world of consumerism, and it is unprofitable to continue to see a division between domestic and professional medicine in the seventeenth century.

Aside from the wealth of research on domestic medical practices, the strength of Stobart's study lies primarily in her efforts to dispense with several long-held assumptions about early modern domestic medicine. Domestic health care was not the sole purview of women; nor was it a system without variables based on time and place. Finally, and most significantly, it was in no way separate from the public sphere of medical shifts and changes. Seventeenth-century families deliberated about medical issues in many of the same ways as families do today, and their options were not as circumscribed as we might assume. For every modern-day man or woman who makes decisions on his or her health, there is a Mary Clarke or Bridget Fortescue who used all resources available to her to care for family, household, and friends. Though the medical milieus differ, perhaps there is some common ground between the seventeenth century and the present day.